


Human I Name Thee.

by kijilinn



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Supernatural
Genre: Camping, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Wendigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 12:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6907312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kijilinn/pseuds/kijilinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A father-daughter camping trip goes horribly wrong. Someone has to save these poor pathetic humans. Takes place in the Supernatural universe, though no SPN characters show up. Both original characters will probably show up in my SPN fics at some point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human I Name Thee.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lissachan](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Lissachan).



> For reference, the language used in this fic is Portuguese. I am not fluent (which any fluent speaker will be able to tell, I'm sure) and I used Google Translate. If anyone who speaks Portuguese comes across this and wants to correct my grammar or mannerisms, please contact me! I'd love to have correction.

" _Filha_ , this looks like a good spot." Isaac turned a slow circle in the clearing, noting the level ground and the sheltering trees. "What do you think? Good enough for the night, anyway?"

His fifteen-year-old daughter pulled herself up the cliffside and flopped onto her belly with a dramatic sigh. "Whatever, _Papai_ , just stop calling me that." She inch-wormed into the clearing, dragging her hiking pack behind her and then rolled onto her back with a sigh. "You kept going on and on about this trip. I didn't think it'd be so LONG."

Isaac looked down at Marina and smiled, then looked back out to the view from the cliff in the mountains of central California. The wilderness swept down below them in a quilt of gold and green under the bluest sky they had seen this summer. "What shall I call you, then, _filha meu_? If you don't like the reminder of how much I love you, what would you prefer?"

"Marina?" She rolled into a sitting position and shook pine needles out of her thick black braid. "It is my name." When she met his gaze, Isaac felt a pang in his chest: she looked so much like her mother, but her black eyes were her grandmother's, his mother's. He swallowed the emotion and looked away, just as Marina rolled her eyes again, "Gaaaaah, you are so lame sometimes."

"If you think I'm going to apologize for loving you," he said to her, turning and sweeping her into a tight hug and spinning her around, "you are sorely mistaken. I will love you forever and ever and ever." Isaac peppered her oval face with kisses between "evers" and smiled when she squealed in protest. "Will you look for dry wood for a fire, Mari? I'll start setting up the tent."

"Yes, sir," she giggled and jumped up to kiss his cheek. "I love you, too, _Papai_." With a flash of canvas cargo pants and flannel shirt, she disappeared into the trees and her giggle floated back to him.

Isaac grinned to himself as he unrolled the packed tent and began setting out the poles. It was an old-fashioned tent, the kind with an angular shape and floppy aluminum poles that tended to fall down on themselves when not secured properly, but it was what he could afford on his stipend. Being a small town pastor tended toward poverty, especially when the regional conference didn't bother to pay much attention to small town clergy. He didn't complain, though. Todd Valley was home and the local church had been good to him. He struggled for a few moments, trying to balance the tent over the wobbly poles. When it fell over for the third time, he decided to wait for Marina to get back and started clearing an area in the dirt to line with stones for a fire pit.

Once the fire pit was organized to his satisfaction, Isaac began to wonder where his daughter had gone. "Marina?" he called into the forest. " _Cadê você_?" There was only a ripple of wind in the pines and Isaac frown. "Marina!" he shouted. No answer came back. Panic tickled the back of his throat and Isaac started into the forest, calling his daughter's name. "Vanessa is going to kill me. Marina!"

"Papai?" Her voice was distant and afraid. He began to run. "Papai!"

"Marina!" Isaac put on a burst of speed and scrambled up an incline. As he broke through the trees into another clearing, he scanned the area, desperate to put eyes on the girl who owned his heart. "Mari?"

There was nothing in the clearing, but the brush was moving slightly, bowing and nodding as if a strong wind had whipped through a few seconds before. He heard Marina scream then, back toward the tent clearing. Panicked, Isaac turned back and sprinted. The vines and ferns caught at his ankles and he hopped, struggling to keep his balance. " _Deus, meu Deus. Mantê-la segura. Que ela seja segura_." Back at the campsite, there was blood spattered on the tent poles, sprayed in a circle around the fire pit. "No! Marina!"

" _Papai_!" Her voice echoed off the cliffs and rebounded strangely in the trees.

He turned, his heart hammering in his ribs, unable to keep his breathing even. Where was she? It sounded like she was right there, right beside him. Suddenly, something had his legs at the ankles and Isaac bellowed in combined rage and fear. He was flying through the undergrowth, bouncing off of rocks and trees, bewildered and unable to gain his bearings. He tried to open his mouth to scream for his daughter, only to gain a mouthful of ferns and dirt. His head bounced off of something harder than his skull and stars spun out of his vision until blackness consumed him.

***

The trees had barely closed behind Marina when she had a creeping feeling of being watched. She crouched behind a tree and looked around slowly, keeping her breathing even and her eyes wide for whatever had triggered the paranoia. She could still hear her father humming tunelessly to himself as he tried to set up the tent. How he managed to lead a congregation in song was anyone's guess and she smiled to herself, in spite of the worry. For all the grief she and her father gave each other, she did love him dearly.

Something rustled to her right and Marina ducked down again, looking that way and edging slowly towards the sound. If she was imagining the sounds, she would feel silly about it later, but better safe than sorry. With a few calculated glances, she rolled from her shelter behind the tree into a deeper thicket of sagebrush.

A distant, mechanical sound drew her attention and Marina squinted into the forest. Watching feelings, strange machines, sounds in the forest. This camping trip was turning out weirder than her usual trips with her father. She crept closer to the sound and stared in bafflement at the brilliantly blue shape in the nearby clearing. "What the hell is a police box?"

Hands caught her from behind, one over her mouth. She screamed into the hand and flailed, then remembered her self-defense training and brought one elbow back sharply into the stomach of her attacker. She heard a startled "oof!" at the same time as her elbow collided with flesh and cloth. Her unseen attacker staggered back with a groan and Marina rolled away from him, fists up defensively. "Blimey," he grunted and raised his head to smile in bemusement. "Quite the elbow you've got there."

"Who the hell are you?" she asked, fists still raised defensively.

"Funny, everyone seems to want to know that." He straightened up and rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm just passing through, really. Little sightseeing, thought 21st century California seemed like the place to be." Something in the pocket of his blue suit jacket buzzed and he reached inside quickly, pulling free an oversized penlight with a blue bulb on the end. "Hmmm... definitely the place to be." Without another glance at Marina, he strode into the forest.

Marina did a double-take after him, then dashed into his path, "Wait a minute! Where are you going? You haven't answered my question."

"I'm nobody," he said without looking back. "Go back home, little girl. It's dangerous out here."

"I'm camping with my dad," she told him. "What do you mean it's dangerous?"

"Wolves, cougars, fafferdoodles, all kinds of nasty things live in California. Indoors is definitely better for little girls."

"Faffer..." Marina trailed off and stopped to stare helplessly at the man's receding back. "You're crazy."

"You're the one talking to a strange man in the woods," he said cheerfully over his shoulder. "Don't they tell fairy tales or something about that sort of thing anymore?"

Marina threw up her hands and chased after him for a few steps, "Why won't you tell me who you are?"

"Because it's not important and you'll probably never see me again." He turned his head to the left a little and cut across her path, muttering to himself. "Besides, takes too long."

"MARINA!" shouted her father and Marina turned back toward the campsite. She could hear struggling and her father yelling some more.

"Papai?" A few steps toward the campsite was as far as she got before she felt the man's hand on her arm. "That's my father. He's calling for me."

"I don't think that's your father." The stranger's gaze was dark and serious now behind his horn-rimmed glasses. He looked down into Marina's face and sniffed a little, almost apologetic. "At least, not anymore."

"What?" Panic flooded her and Marina began to run toward the voices. "Papai!"

"Marina!" her father called back and she ran harder.

Just as she was about to burst through the pines and into the clearing again, the stranger's arms caught her under the arms and pulled her up short. She screamed and kicked out, bracing her shoulders against his chest to get better leverage. "Let me go! My papai's in trouble!"

"Shhhh." The stranger set her down and held her still, then extended one finger into the distance. "Look there."

Something was dragging her father's unconscious form away and Marina gasped, covering her mouth with one hand. "Papai," she whispered as tears began to prick her eyes. "What's going on? I have to help him!"

"We will," the man sighed and let her go, one hand still resting on her shoulder. "But you have to trust me. You can't help him yet."

"Tell me who you are and maybe I'll trust you," she hissed back at him without looking away from where her father's body had been moments before.

"I'm the Doctor," he said. "And what has your father is what I was trying to track down."

"What is it?" she asked, looking into the Doctor's face curiously.

"A wendigo." He gave her a sad smile. "Nasty creatures, but at least they're native to your planet. One of the worst natives." After a few moments listening to the quiet of the forest, he adds, "Besides humans. Of course, it could be argued that they're an offshoot of humans. Creeping undead monsters born from the heart of a guilty conscience." The Doctor took a few steps into the campsite clearing and paced around it as he spoke, "But the undead don't exist, you say? Well, on most planets, that's true. But not here, oh no, you Earthlings have to have everything. You kill yourselves, you kill each other, you kill the innocent. And then those innocents come back through guilt and science and the strength of their very souls. Any other self-respecting alien stays dead when they die. But you? You come back as wendigo and poltergeists and zombies and demons." He sighed and shook his head, "But you don't know any of this. You're just a little lost girl."

"I'm not a little girl." Marina stood staring at him, feeling a tremble in her chest like terror or excitement, but she wasn't sure which. "But nothing you're saying makes sense."

"Of course not." The Doctor smiled. "It never does."

***

Slowly, Isaac became aware of his surroundings again. His head was splitting and his eyes stung like sweat or blood had run into his eyes. He blinked the feeling away and confirmed that it was blood, metallic and salty on his tongue. The ground under his hip was cold and gritty, rocky. Isaac tried to sit up and grunted when he put weight on his left arm, buckling back down to the ground. "Broken. Sprained at the best," he muttered to himself and tightened his stomach to pull himself up without his arm.

Something moved nearby and Isaac froze, listening. A cold sweat broke out along his spine and neck. He found himself wondering where Marina was, hoping and praying that she was safe. The movement continued, clear footsteps as whatever was there brushed through the fallen leaves and broken rubble around the mouth of the cave. Isaac crouched, bunching his good arm close and tightening his hand into a fist. Whatever this thing was, it wouldn't catch him off-guard again.

With blazing speed, whatever had been walking nearby flashed past Isaac and he felt something impact his ribs. He grunted and doubled over, hugging his bad arm to his chest. He hadn't even see the thing, just only the blur of something moving past him. Dizzy with pain and the speed of the thing, Isaac leaned hard against the wall of the cave and began to pray aloud: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."

A sound reached him. The slow crunching of gravel and rustling of undergrowth. And an inhuman sound like laughter.

Everything went black.

***

Marina and the Doctor progressed through the forest, listening to the sounds of birds and the wind in the trees. He continually swept that odd little penlight in front of them while it buzzed oddly. "What is that thing anyway?" Marina whispered.

"Sonic screwdriver," he replied without missing a beat.

She stared at him and shook her head. "You really are crazy."

"Madman with a box," he agreed. Before Marina could answer, he put a hand up and they both stopped. "It's up ahead. It's been keeping its victims alive. Keeping them for later." The Doctor gave her a long look, then smiled, "You should stay here."

"I can fight," Marina snapped.

"But you can't move fast enough," he sighed. "Please. Stay here. I'll make sure your father is safe."

Marina chewed her lip, thinking about how fast the thing had seemed to move. Finally, she nodded. "Okay. I'm trusting you, Doctor. Bring him back." He patted her cheek with a gentle smile, then turned and strode into the clearing outside the cave.

"Come out here, you beauty," the Doctor called as he walked. "Let me see that gorgeous face." The wendigo stepped out to face him, wincing under the sun. It was grey-skinned and wrinkled, humanoid but only barely. The Doctor smiled grimly and nodded, "There you are, beauty. Great monster of Earth. One of the few that even the outer worlds would fear. Human, I name thee!"

The creature reared back and snarled into his face and the Doctor bellowed back at it. It huffed out an angry, uncomfortable breath, then turned and sprinted off into the trees again. "That's right," the Doctor said softly as it vanished. "Run away, little human." He looked back toward Marina and smiled, then vanished into the cave to rescue her father.


End file.
